Mocha Chocolate Cashew Cheesecake

Easy recipe for a dairy-free and plant-based mocha chocolate cheesecake. Cream cheese and eggs have been ditched in favour of heart-healthy cashew nuts and coconut butter. Try this nutrient dense cheesecake today!

Suitable for paleo, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free and healthy diets. I would also consider this cake suitable for a raw vegan diet – but you will probably want to use a coffee substitute such as chicory. A small amount of cooked ingredients like coconut sugar or maple syrup is usually acceptable on a raw food diet.

Mocha Chocolate Cashew Cheesecake Recipe

Total time:20m

Yield:14 servings

Calories:280 cal

Ingredients

Base

1 cup / 140g Almonds

1 cup / 175g Pitted Dates

½ cup / 30g Shredded Coconut

2 tbsp Cacao powder

a pinch of Salt

Filling

1½ cups / 225g Cashews

3.5 oz / 100g Coconut Butter

1 shot Espresso or Chicory coffee

5 tbsp Coconut Sugar

2 tbsp Cacao powder

1 tsp Vanilla

1 tsp Cinnamon

1 cup / 235ml Water (add more if needed)

Topping suggestions

Cacao nibs

Chocolate dipped Coffee beans

Method

Blend all of the base ingredients in a food processor until they stick together and the oils from the almonds start to be released.

Push the base into tin around 8″.

Melt the coconut butter in a bain-marie.

Add all of the filling ingredients to a high-speed blender and blend on high for 2-3 mins until smooth.

Pour the filling over the base and chill in the fridge for a few hours or one hour in the freezer.

Sprinkle on the cacao/coffee beans, store in the fridge and enjoy within 3 days.

Mocha Chocolate Cashew Cheesecake Video Recipe

If you watch the video recipe you will notice the cake wasn’t quite set when I took it out. Ideally, it should have had a few more hours in the fridge but I wanted to finish the filming. The next day it was set enough to stand up on its own. If you want a really set cheesecake then add more coconut butter, but this makes it quite heavy so I prefer it as the original recipe.

The coconut sugar can be substituted for any other sweetener that you prefer. I like coconut sugar as it has a rich caramel flavour and for a mocha coffee cheesecake, it doesn’t matter that it turns the cashew mixture brown for this cake. I don’t soak cashew nuts but if you are using a blender that isn’t powerful then it would be best to soak them first.

You can make a totally caffeine-free mocha carob chicory cake. To do this replace the espresso with chicory and the cacao with carob. If you are feeling adventurous you can make coffee out of dandelions! For a nut free cake replace the base and filling with sunflower seeds. It’s advised to soak the sunflower seeds for 8 hours to sprout.

What is Coconut Butter?

Coconut butter is the blocks of coconut that many health food shops sell. The brand I buy is raw and organic. It’s similar to coconut oil but it’s made from creaming the whole coconut and no fibre is extracted. This means it’s not totally smooth but it works very well in raw vegan cheesecakes and is cheaper than coconut oil. If you can’t get coconut butter then coconut oil or cacao butter work just as well.

Mocha Chocolate Cashew Cheesecake was last modified: May 14th, 2017 by Bastian Nest and Glow